Friday, August 21, 2015

Google going rogue

Robert Epstein, writing at Politico, says, forget about reforming the Electoral College. Worry about Google;

Research I have been directing in recent years suggests that Google,
Inc., has amassed far more power to control elections—indeed, to control
a wide variety of opinions and beliefs—than any company in history has
ever had. Google’s search algorithm can easily shift the voting
preferences of undecided voters by 20 percent or more—up to 80 percent
in some demographic groups—with virtually no one knowing they are being
manipulated, according to experiments I conducted recently with Ronald E. Robertson.Given
that many elections are won by small margins, this gives Google the
power, right now, to flip upwards of 25 percent of the national
elections worldwide. In the United States, half of our presidential
elections have been won by margins under 7.6 percent, and the 2012
election was won by a margin of only 3.9 percent—well within Google’s
control.

Not a conspiracy nut, Epstein is senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology and the former editor-in-chief ofPsychology Today. Even if Google's executives didn't want to use their ability to manipulate the electorate, one or some of their employees could easily do it without their knowledge, by doing to candidates what they do right now constantly; adjust the search engine's mathmetical formulae.

Not that something like this hasn't happened before, says Epstein;

Rutherford B. Hayes, the 19th president of the United States, was put
into office in part because of strong support by Western Union. In the
late 1800s, Western Union had a monopoly on communications in America,
and just before the election of 1876, the company did its best to assure
that only positive news stories about Hayes appeared in newspapers
nationwide. It also shared all the telegrams sent by his opponent’s
campaign staff with Hayes’s staff.

And, even possibly, more recently;

Perhaps the most effective way to
wield political influence in today’s high-tech world is to donate money
to a candidate and then to use technology to make sure he or she wins.
The technology guarantees the win, and the donation guarantees
allegiance, which Google has certainly tapped in recent years with the
Obama administration.